Firefox 8.0 Keeps Up Mozilla's Speedy Browser Pace

Mozilla is
maintaining its rapid-fire cadence of browser releases with the new Firefox
8.0, issued roughly six weeks after Firefox 7.
This latest
update for Windows, Mac and Linux offers precious few major tweaks on its
recent predecessors, although it does include Twitter as a search option
alongside Google, Bing and other sources. On top of that, Mozilla has disabled
the ability for third-party developers to install browser add-ons without the
user's explicit approval.

The new
Firefox lets users load tabs on demand, which Mozilla claimed in a Nov. 8 corporate blog posting will make it "much faster to restore windows with many
tabs" upon start up. The organization has added support for Cross-Origin
Resource Sharing (CORS), with an eye toward giving developers the ability to
securely load WebGL textures from other domains.

Other
additions include stability and security patches, according to Mozilla's Firefox 8 release notes.
Mozilla has
also updated Firefox for Android with new features such as Firefox Master
Password, which encrypts saved user names and passwords. This added layer of
security will supposedly help should one's Android-based device end up lost or
stolen. With the latest version, users can also add bookmarks to the Android
home screen.
Firefox 7,
Mozilla's previous release, managed memory more efficiently to deliver a faster
Web-browsing experience, along with tools to help developers create speedier
Websites and Web applications. Mozilla used the release as an opportunity to
add support for the WC3 navigation timing spec API, along with updated
WebSockets, and the ability to opt into the Telemetry tool.
Firefox 7 arrived
six weeks after Mozilla launched Firefox 6 in mid-August, which itself landed
barely two months after Firefox 5. None of these successive browser versions
offered a radically different experience, with relatively minor user-interface
tweaks and progressively more support for developers.
For consumers,
installing these latest browser versions isn't an incredible hassle: You click
"download" and, a few minutes later, launch away. For larger enterprises,
though, Mozilla's rapid release cadence has been a source of consternation,
with administrators claiming it snarls their ability to deploy a browser
throughout an organization in a timely and consistent way.
In an olive
branch of sorts to those enterprise customers, Mozilla earlier this year
re-established the Mozilla Enterprise User Working group as a place for
enterprise administrators and other IT pros to discuss issues and best
practices. Even as it moved to do so, however, rivals such as Microsoft leapt
at the chance to make very public cases that their own browsers were ideal for
businesses.
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Nicholas Kolakowski is a staff editor at eWEEK, covering Microsoft and other companies in the enterprise space, as well as evolving technology such as tablet PCs. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Playboy, WebMD, AARP the Magazine, AutoWeek, Washington City Paper, Trader Monthly, and Private Air. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.